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Bitcoin Adventures
I’ve been following the Bitcoin ecosystem for a few years now, and seeing as a coin is now worth well north of 100USD, I decided to finally explore bitcoin wallets and mining under OSX. What are Bitcoins? A lot has been written about Bitcoins over the past weeks as they’ve broken the $100/฿ mark. Without ...
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Agilent E3631A Power Supply Accuracy
During the course of my thesis, the need for distraction – plus the need to save some labor inspired me to develop automated testing methods. I wrote a little previously about setting up PyVISA on OSX, but didn’t show any real examples of its use. Here, as a proof of concept, I measure the linearity ...
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I Graduated!
It’s been quiet for too long around here… since my last post, my thesis was accepted September 20, 2012 and I received my diploma early February 2012. The title of my thesis was “Low dimensionality spectral sensing for low cost material identification and discrimination”. It really took a lot out of me. I learned a ...
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PyVISA on OSX
So after some persistance, I’ve managed to get PyVISA working under OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on a late 2008 MacBook Pro. Download and install NI VISA 5.1.2 for OSX In your home directory, create the file .pyvisarc with the contents [Paths] VISA library: /Library/Frameworks/VISA.framework/VISA Download and untar PyVISA 1.4 Install as root with easy_install ...
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Keithley 2000 DMM Repair
I’ve been shopping around for a nice bench DMM for a while now, so I bought a busted Keithley 2000 off Ebay thinking that it would be an easy repair. I assumed that all the input protection in a modern DMM should fail first to protect anything important, and all I would need to do ...
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Flying Android Project
In 2009, I was challenged by [govt agency] via GTRI to develop an Unmaned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which is piloted by a smartphone. In particular, only the sensors on the phone may be used and the flight controller must run on the smartphone. Custom electronics were allowed to interface the phone to the airframe (PHY) ...
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GIT URL Changed
I’ve started using Cloudflare and this has required a small change in my git url. I’ve fixed the url in all posts describing my repositories. If you have been collaborating with me on a project, read on to update your repos. In the past, you might have checked out a repo from me like git ...
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LaTeX on WordPress!
Yay, now I can blog like I think… in !
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Bike Thief
So I just caught a bike thief. Here’s what happened. I roll up to the bike racks between E15 and MIT medical. No spots under the overhang, so I park near the repair station. Then I see a green bag with a pair of bolt cutters peeking out of it leaning up against the wall ...
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RoboCup Electronics Museum
When I flew home to Atlanta over Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to visit the “RoboJackets RoboCup Electronics Museum”. Really a nice trip down memory lane. I was on the team from its inception in 2007 till I graduated in 2009. I had the opportunity to lead the team from 2007 to 2009 (system design ...
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Teaching Ale Update
After a few (far too many) weeks, we finally re-racked the Teaching Ale. It was fairly straightforward. Just as before, we meticulously cleaned and sanitized everything that will touch the young beer. We cleaned the keg and a hose. To siphon the beer, we first moved the carboy to a the counter and the keg ...
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HP 5257A Detail
I received a question from Ary Lems about the HP 5257A Transfer Oscillator I tore down a few months ago. He writes, About this one I do have a question. On one of the pictures there is a pc board with nr 05257-60211. On this pc board is an plastic srew and washer placed on ...
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Teaching Brewing
Photos from the brew courtesy of Micah Eckhardt This Friday and Saturday the Media Lab hosted its first Festival of Learning and I volunteered to teach beer brewing. I’m hoping to use this post as a repository for some of the content covered and some of the information I skipped over in the handout. This ...
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Phased Array RADAR
This IAP I had the opportunity to participate in a phased array RADAR course taught by MIT Lincoln Labs. Our team was named winner (best imagery) by the director of MIT LL, Dr. Eric Evens. I’ll follow up with a more detailed post, until then, click through for a video.
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NI USB-6009
So I was handed a National Instruments USB-6009 and I had to tear it down. It’s a fairly nice four layer design, with only a few major components. The board is marked USB-600X and there is an un-populated header – can a USB-6008 be easily upgraded to a USB-6009? On the right, we see a ...
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How to Make (almost) Anything
Duplication of my final post for HTMAA. Grand overview of my final project and a few greatest hits. Teaser! Quick preview of my final project, but first some “greatest hits”. I put most of this work in the content repo, the pictures link to the respective project pages. FabISPkey FabISP remixed. I remixed the FabISP ...
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HTM(a)A Sneak Peak
It’s drawing to a close, check out my MAS.863 How to Make (almost) Anything class wrap up/ final project.
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Spec An Radio
So, I’ve managed to coax my spectrum analyzer to play FM radio! It’s actually fairly straight forward, attach an antenna, with some physics, I found that a 100M monopole is around three meters long. I soldered a piece of 22ish gauge wire to a SMA connector. In the Aux Ctrl menu turn ON demodulation, and ...